Obama Told To Stuff It
On CNN Ticker – the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives has refused to bring up Obama’s deal.
Maybe Obama should have included a few Democrats in his negotiations, instead of just springing this on them as a “done deal”. Maybe someone should direct Obama to the Constitution and the concept of the separation of powers. Maybe someone should explain the concept of negotiations to the White House.
Update for clarity: The caucus has voted against the proposal. Speaker Pelosi may still move a bill with those provisions to the floor of the House, but a majority of Dems have already said “no”, and it is unlikely that the Republicans can make up the votes to pass it. Pelosi would face problems with her role as minority leader in the new Congress if she moves the bill, which will apparently have to be proposed by a Republican.
Update 2: Pelosi will abide by the decision of the caucus and will not hold a vote on the bill without “changes”.
An aside to Obama: this is called reality. Cutting deals without involving the Democratic Congressional leaders has consequences. The White House really screwed up on this.
4 comments
Well,
All righty then.
We’re not going down without a fight!
Thanks for the coverage!
S
Obama was blatantly ignoring the Democrats in Congress, taking their acquiescence for granted, his due, if you will, and these people are powerful in their own right. Most of them want to get re-elected and they know that his lack of leadership was as responsible as anything for the election losses.
So far the only thing Obama seems good at is primary elections. Timmy the Wonder Lizard would have been elected with a D after his name following the Shrubbery and facing McCain/Palin. No one much is going to make the effort to vote for Obama in 2012, and he has now included the Democrats in the House and Senate to the opposition.
Well, the deal Obama proposed proves he is either very stupid, or truly a Rethug tool to ensure a Rethug victory in 2012. Krugman explains in this post:
December 2011
“So there are real reasons to worry here. Obama may be buying off the hostage-takers by … giving them more hostages.”
Maybe whatever self-preservation the Dem’s have left finally kicked in. But I suspect it’s too late anyway.
Nominating Obama was a major screw-up. All of his early money was from the financial industry, and that should have made it obvious who owned him, but they continued along the road to disaster, based almost exclusively on his race. They had a major opportunity to correct a lot of the errors that have been piling up since Reagan was elected, and they flushed them down the loo to do something “historic”.